


Balth (and Ben) (and Breaking Up) In A Bath

by AccioInvisibilityCloak



Category: Lovely Little Losers, Nothing Much to Do
Genre: Angst, Balth in a Bath, Canonballed, Gen, Nonbinary Balthazar, Nonbinary Character, alcohol tw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-23
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-04-16 22:06:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4641876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AccioInvisibilityCloak/pseuds/AccioInvisibilityCloak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Balthazar... play me a song?"</p><p>Balth films another bath vlog with Ben to help him cope with the end of his relationship with Beatrice, and can't help but dwell on their own recent fight with Peter, which they can't really even call a breakup. Even if it felt like one.</p><p>Wrote this a while ago and put it on Tumblr. Figured I'd transplant it here now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Balth (and Ben) (and Breaking Up) In A Bath

**Author's Note:**

> Song is "Almost Lover" by A Fine Frenzy, because I was casting around for a breakup song and remembered Ann Knightley/sonseulsoleil mentioning she thought it was a fitting Beadick song. I just applied it to both relationships. This fic is, thankfully, canonballed in several ways. I was right on about Pedrazar never having actually dated, but I was (thank goodness) totally wrong about Ben and Bea breaking up. But I still like this fic enough to put it here. Hope you enjoy. Sorry for the sadness. And please don't be mad at me for this being Balth in a Bath related, I know lots of people are sick of those videos, and I see where you're coming from. This was written before we had gotten so many, so that criticism hadn't cropped up yet. I'm getting a tad bored with them too but I still love this friendship. Also I'm cis, so if anything about my NB Balth characterization is problematic or poorly done, please do let me know.

“Hey, Balth?” Benedick asks sadly from his spot in the bath. “Play me a song?”

He’s been like this all day, absent, quieter than Balth’s ever seen him. They’re a little worried about him, especially when he passes them a beer that had been waiting unopened for him to finish the one in his hand. Balth doesn’t know how much he’s had, but Ben doesn’t usually get drunk unless he’s at a party or something, and it’s the middle of the night on a Thursday. 

They’d seen Ben staring gloomily at his phone this afternoon after class, and they knew exactly who he was hoping would call. They figure right now Ben can use some company.

Balth knows Ben and Bea are over. They couldn’t help but overhear Ben arguing with her on the phone last night. Hell of a way to end things. At least Balthazar got to have it out with Ped- Peter, in person when it happened, and the two of them had never even really been official. Now they’re not anything, not even friends, and it doesn’t feel real, a week later. They can hear Pedro saying the words and it doesn’t feel real. I just can’t be with you right now. It’s better this way. 

And maybe it is.

Anyway Balth takes the beer and has a swig or two on their way to retrieve their ukulele. When they get back, Ben is leaning back against the tiles of the shower wall, eyes closed, but not asleep. He moves to make room for his friend to sit next to him.

They clamber into the bath beside him and begin to play a song as promised. They don’t exactly plan what comes out.

“Goodbye, my almost lover  
Goodbye, my hopeless dream  
I’m trying not to think about you  
Can’t you just let me be?  
So long, my luckless romance  
My back is turned on you  
I should’ve known you’d bring me heartache  
Almost lovers always do.”

They play the whole song, singing slow and just above a whisper, and they miss when the bath vlogs were just Balth and Ben laughing and joking and talking over favorite children’s stories like the mature young adults they were. They miss when they were happy, when Ben was happy, when the whole flat was happy and full of life. Balthazar misses being able to believe Ped- Peter, was at least still their friend, but maybe that time had never existed anyway. Maybe it was always just Balth pining and Peter needing someone on whom to unload all his guilt. At any rate, Peter hasn’t spoken to them beyond what basic courtesy calls for since last week.

Ben is silent until Balth finishes singing the last haunting note, and then he opens his red-rimmed eyes. “Bet I know who that was for,” he croaks, and the noise he makes isn’t quite a laugh, isn’t quite a cough.

Balth doesn’t respond, just lays the uke carefully on the ground outside the tub and sighs. “I’m sorry, Benedick.” They mean to say much more, that they know what breakups are like and they wish he didn’t have to know; that it will stop hurting at some point. They aren’t entirely sure, at this moment, that that’s true.

“Me too,” Ben whispers, his voice breaking just a little on the words, and Balth knows he understood.

And a while later, when all the alcohol is gone and both friends feel almost okay again, and Ben wants to turn the camera on, Balth doesn’t say no. For Ben, talking helps. They know this, even if they don’t really work in quite the same way.

“Hhhhheyyyyyyy,” Ben says, smiling at the camera, and the smile doesn’t reach his clouded eyes. “Hey guysss. Balthy and I are hokenbrarted- er, bro- brokenhearted.”

Several minutes later, after a dramatic and near-unintelligible explanation of exactly how awful the breakup with Beatrice was and how he’ll never love again, Ben realizes Balthy’s been silent the whole time.

“Don’t wanna talk about it,” they mutter, shaking their head, when he presses for the Peter story. They’ll tell Ben everything later, when they’ve slept it off and they aren’t on camera anymore.

“Fine then, be that way,” says Ben indignantly. “Camera and I can fend for ourselves, right camera?” He hugs the hunk of metal and plastic close and accidentally hits the Power Down button. “Ohhh… bye then, camera.”

Balthazar doesn’t want to think anymore. They lean back in the bath and close their tired eyes. Ben puts down the camera and lays down next to them again, both friends with their legs propped on the edge of the tub and their backs against the wet shower wall.

“Hey, Ben”, Balth murmurs, their head drooping to rest on their best friend’s bony shoulder. It’s still comfortable, somehow. “Tell me a story.”

Ben smirks. “One of the rabbit ones?”

“Shut up.”

Sighing, leaning against Balthy too, Ben begins, “Once upon a time, there lived a merm- a merperson. There lived a merperson, and they dreamed of the day when they’d be old enough to swim to the surface. Until they realized the surface fucking sucked, and humans were terrible, and romance was dead. They decided it was cooler in the ocean anyway, and they made friends with one of those sea-dinosaursss-” He stumbles for the word, and Balth knows if Ben was sober he’d have proudly come up with the exact scientific term, correctly pronounced, and the knowledge that sea-dinosaurs weren’t dinosaurs? Weren’t in the sea? Something like that? They’re too drunk to remember correctly.

Anyway, Ben is drunk too, and he gives up, and goes on sleepily about how if merpeople exist in this fictional universe then he can have extinct swimming dinosaurs too, thank you very much, and Balth listens to their friend’s slightly slurred voice murmuring on about fictional and/or dead sea dwellers, until they aren’t listening at all anymore.

Slowly their ears stop paying attention and their eyes drift closed and they are floating in the sea, nothing around them but water, no Pedro or Peter or whoever he is in sight. They think of nothing at all, just roll through the waves, and it’s almost okay.

In the morning, their neck is cricked and their back is sore and to their horror, their ukulele, their special red uke signed by the Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra, is lying on the bathroom floor just at the foot of the tub. Ben is still snoring softly next to them. Balthazar hopes his dreams were of sea dinosaurs, the nerd. They pick up their uke and leave Ben to his rest, and creep back to their room, where they sit with their pounding headache, and when it goes down a bit, they compose a quiet, sad little song. It’s going to be about the ocean. It’s the first new tune they’ve composed in weeks.

The words will come later, Balthazar knows.


End file.
